Award-winning opera director, Garth Bardsley studied at St John's College, Cambridge, and at the Royal Northern College of Music. He made his operatic debut with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and was a soloist for various opera companies. He has extensive experience in musical theatre and starred in the West End productions of Jerry Herman’s The Best of Time and as the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera. As a director, Garth has produced for numerous leading conservatoires and international festivals. His production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream won the Manchester Theatre Award Best Opera 2016. His first book, Stop the World - The Biography of Anthony Newley, was serialised in The Daily Mail, and garnered 5* reviews from the national press. He has written several plays and, as a poet and lyricist, collaborates with British composer Ben Parry. Their numerous works have been performed and broadcast across the UK and America including the RAH, Christmas at Kings, Sage Gateshead, Washington DC’s National Cathedral and The Kennedy Center. Their Christmas pop song I Wrote You a Christmas Love Song has been recorded by the Royal Air Force Big Band and National Youth Choir of Great Britain and will be broadcast worldwide this December. Garth also writes with American composer Gregory Wanamaker and in 2016 their choral work, Laude!, was broadcast on PBS across America and Canada. Together they are working on a new chamber opera to be premiered in 2020 and featuring Dimitri Pittas and Leah Edwards. Garth is a senior lecturer in opera studies and performance practice at the Royal Northern College of Music and a visiting tutor at the Royal College of Music. He has recently returned from a year’s Visiting Associate Professorship at NYU in Manhattan where he was director of opera.